Product of mercury soluble in water and method of manufacturing same.



ALFRED LOTTERMOSER, OF DRESDEN, GERMANY, ASSIGNOR T THE QIIEM- ISCHEFABRIK 'VON HEYDEN, GESELLSGHAFT MIT BESCHRANKTER IIAF- TUNG, OFRADEBEUL, GERMANY;

PRODUCT OF MERCURY SOLUB LE IN WATER AND METHOD OF MANUFACTURING SAMI-I.

SPEGIFICALTION formingpart of Letters Patent No. 628,270, dated July 4,1899.

' Application filed July 9,1898. Serial No. 685,477. (No specimens.)

-Ta,ZZ whom, it may concern: I

Be it known that I, ALFRED L'oTTEnMosER, a subject of the King ofSaxony, and aresident of Zelleschestrasse 31, Dresden, Kingdom ofSaxony, German Empire, have invented a new and useful Improvement in aProduct of Mercury Soluble in \Vater and Method of Manufacturing theSame, of which the following is a specification.

Various modifications of silver have been brought to public knowledge byM. Carey Lea, (see American Journal of Sciences, III Series VolJXXXVII,page 476 et seq. ,)of which modi-- fications one soluble in water is ofespecial importance and has already found employment.

I have discovered that.metallic mercury may be converted into awater-soluble modification. This new. substance, which maybe termedcolloidal mercury, consists of solid black fragments or pieces having ametallic.

luster and capable of being easily dissolved in water, and thus giving adark solution, which is only transparent with translucent 2 5 light, butwhich is strongly fluorescent with incident light. This new substanceserves in medicine and in the arts as a substitute for the insolublemetallic mercury hitherto exclusively employed and may be used advan- 3otageously-e. g., for the production of mercurial salve and for theproduction of mercurial.

solution for injection instead of the emulsion of insoluble salts ofmercury in parafliuum liquidum hitherto used for injection 5 purposes.

The water-soluble mercury is produced by reducing with tin-protoxidsalts any of the mercury salts which are soluble in water.

Example: Five hundred and fifty parts,

40 by weight, of nitrate of protoxid of mercury,

- lIg (NO is brought into solution of about ten per cent., with anaddition of some nitric acid, and this solution allowed to run slowlyinto a solution of one hundred and thirty to two hundred parts, byweight, ofprotoxid of tin (SnO) in nitric acid while stirring. To thedark solution which results there i s'preferabl y added a concentratedsolution of citrate of ammonia until the dissolved colloidal mercury hasbeen precipitated as a black mass. After neutralizing with ammonia themass is allowed to settle, the liquid decanted off by' siphon action,and the muddy residue dried; but before this drying I prefer to wash thesaid residue.- For this washing I prefer to use water into which asuitable quantity of an ammonia salt has been dissolved for the purposeof preventing the water from dissolv ing too much of the metallicmercury. The longer such washing of the preparation is continued themore completely the tin and the ammonia salt will be removed from it. Ifthe washing out is not continued for a considerable period, a productwill be obtained which contains about twenty per cent. of impurities.Instead of salts of ammonia any other neutral alkaline salts may beused, such as the citrate of sodium.

The formation of the colloidal mercury verting such salts into thesoluble metal by treatment with the salts of protoxid of tin,substantially as herein described.

In testimony that I claim the foregoing as my invention I have signed myname, in presence of two witnesses, this 24th day of June,

ALFRED LOTTERMOSER. Witnesses:

HERNANDO DE Sorro.

PAUL Annns.

